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Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Unexpected journeys

I'm struggling. Not with the writing so much though - that seems to be flowing just fine. No, the problem I'm having is, actually driving my story. Characters keep doing things I wasn't intending, and meeting people I didn't know existed. And I'm finding it hard to reign them in and get them to the place they need to be. 12 chapters into the book, it's still only 5 or 6 days into my characters' lives. I thought I'd be well away from here by now.

Last night, I decided that I didn't need to figure out a way to bridge a gap of 3 months which I thought I had to do. One of my characters had a hysterical meltdown that wasn't planned for her (in fact, this was supposed to happen to my other protag, much later on) and that changed the landscape to a degree. So now things I thought were going to happen much later in the book, can happen now. But before that can go ahead, these damn characters need to stop going on tangents with their diving coaches or their best friends. Are you listening Tony and Lucy?

Do any of you have trouble with wayward characters? Do they keep sending you off on unexpected paths?

2 comments:

A lot of the time I let my characters just run rampant, but I have one recently who wants to and I have to keep reigning him back in. I need him to be calm and cool and he keeps blowing a gasket and getting all emotional on me.

About Me

Author of An Unstill Life and STUMPED (releasing 15 December 2017) I am a writer, marketing executive for a national film agency, film reviewer and mother to two boys. As you can imagine, with all that going on, I don't sleep much.